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@spartan: I helped with the design of that Pro bar clamping piece. Its designer is a friend of mine and the same guy who designed the Vibe bars. He even asked for my feedback during early development of that stem. Also, after seeing its first proto, I was actually the one who made that one fit so yeah, I'm intimately acquainted with its constraints. Despite that, I find that Ritchey succeeded at doing a better job with their new C260 and that'll likely reflect in sales.

One caveat, I don't know how well the Ritchey C260 clamp will do with, say, carbon bars that have a torque limitation of 3Nm. I get the impression that the uneven clamp force might not sit will with the 'black stuff' without resorting to some metal reinforcement for the clamping surface on the bars. A bar clamp with two equal degrees of clamping surface has so far proven best for carbon bars.

What I would actually like is to see an even lighter and stiffer stem come to the market, say, 80g for 120mm...

“I always find it amazing that a material can actually sell a product when it’s really the engineering that creates and dictates how well that material will behave or perform.” — Chuck Teixeira

4Nm would promote bar slip on this stem, and I speak from experience. These bolts probably can't be clamped much higher anyway, as their thread callout is smaller and the bolt has less meat. But that photo from an angle I've not seen before just shows that the inside of the faceplate has a rougher surface, so that's the countermeasure against the bar slip that would be caused by the offset clamp bolts. Once again, cleverly worked out by Mr. Ritchey!

“I always find it amazing that a material can actually sell a product when it’s really the engineering that creates and dictates how well that material will behave or perform.” — Chuck Teixeira

so stems are really easy to make, theres no real way of making them better, all the current designs work well enough so the only way your gonna sell a new one is to make it look different.Actually that kinda applies to all bike stuff these days, no ones come out with anything better for years just stuff that looks different

Those offset bolts on the bottom of the stem look like a total PITA to work on. Also not a fan of the new Pro vibe stem either....

The Ritchey WCS 4axis stuff was/is classic and works great. But, like so many companies (ie Selle Italia messing with the original Flite and not the SLR....) they feel they have to change something to keep sales going.

Fine: then for those bars get a different stem. That's hardly a "fail". These are really nice mass numbers for 31.8 mm from a company known for its honesty. If you care about weight you're probably on round bars anyway because they're lighter.

djconnel wrote:These are really nice mass numbers for 31.8 mm from a company known for its honesty.

OK. You buy one if you like it so much. We'll see how honest Ritchey is when turns out a market flop. Even OEMs aren't going to like it because of the risk of scratching bars during installation and the extra steps required during assembly.

You sound like you've never lived through the era of Cinelli 1A and XA stems ??